The Christmas Mouse Page 4

  ‘Now you wrap up,’ she said coaxingly, as if she were addressing one of her little daughters. ‘We’ll soon catch that old mouse for you.’

  ‘I’m ashamed to be so afeared of a little creature,’ confessed Mrs Berry, ‘but there it is. They give me the horrors, mice do, and rats even worse. Don’t ask me why!’

  Mary knew from experience this terror of her mother’s. She confronted other hazards of country life with calm courage. Spiders, caterpillars, bulls in fields, adders on the heath, any animals in pain or fury found old Mrs Berry completely undaunted. Mary could clearly remember her mother dealing with a dog that had been run over and writhed, demented with pain, not far from their cottage door. It had savaged two would-be helpers, and a few distressed onlookers were wondering what to do next when Mrs Berry approached and calmed the animal in a way that had seemed miraculous. But a mouse sent her flying, and Mary knew, as she found some wood to replenish the fire, that nothing would persuade her mother back to the bedroom until the intruder had been dispatched.

  She settled herself in the other armchair, resigned to another twenty minutes or more of waiting. She longed desperately for her bed, but could not relax until her mother was comfortably settled. She listened for sounds from above – the click of the mousetrap that would release her from her vigil, or the noise of the children waking and rummaging for the pillowcases, wailing at the nonappearance of Father Christmas.

  But above the noise of the storm outside, it was difficult to hear anything clearly upstairs. She pushed the two telltale pillowcases under the table, so that they were hidden from the eyes of any child who might enter unannounced, and leaned back with her eyes closed.

  Invariably, Bertie’s dear face drifted before her when she closed her eyes, but now, to her surprise and shame, another man’s face smiled at her. It was the face of one of Bertie’s workmates. He too had been one of the party on that tragic wayzgoose, and had written to Mary and her mother soon after the accident. She had known him from childhood. Rather a milksop, most people said of Ray Bullen, but Mary liked his gentle ways and thought none the less of him because he had remained a bachelor.

  ‘Some are the marrying sort, and some aren’t,’ she had replied once to the village gossip who had been speculating upon Ray’s future. Mary was all too conscious of the desire of busybodies to find her a husband in the months after Bertie’s death. They got short shrift from Mary, and interest waned before long.

  ‘Too sharp tongued by half,’ said those who had been lashed by it. ‘No man in his senses would take her on, and them two girls too.’

  Here they were wrong. One or two men had paid attention to Mary, and would have welcomed some advances on her side. But none were forthcoming. Truth to tell, Mary was in such a state of numbed shock for so long that very little affected her.

  But Ray’s letter of condolence had been kept. There was something unusually warm and comforting in the simple words. Here was true sympathy. It was the only letter that had caused Mary to weep and, weeping, to find relief.

  She saw Ray very seldom, for their ways did not cross. But that afternoon in Caxley he had been at the bus stop when she arrived laden with baskets and anxious about the little girls amidst the Christmas traffic. He had taken charge of them all so easily and naturally – seeing them on to the bus, disposing of the parcels, smiling at the children and wishing them all well at Christmas – that it was not until she was halfway to Shepherds Cross that Mary realized that he had somehow contrived to give the little girls a shilling each. Also, she realized with a pang, he must have missed his own bus, which went out about the same time as theirs.

  She supposed, leaning back now in the armchair, that her extreme tiredness had brought his face before her tonight. It was not a handsome face, to be sure, but it was kind and gentle, and, from all she heard, Ray Bullen had both those qualities as well as strong principles. He was a Quaker, she knew, and she remembered a little passage about Quakers from the library book she was reading. Something about them ‘making the best chocolate and being very thoughtful and wealthy and good.’ It had amused her at the time, and though Ray Bullen could never be said to be wealthy, he was certainly thoughtful and good.

  She became conscious of her mother’s voice, garrulous in her nervousness.

  ‘It’s funny how you can sense them when you’re frightened of them. Not that I had any premonition tonight, I was too busy thinking about getting those pillowcases safely upstairs. But I well remember helping my aunt clear out her scullery when I was a child. No older than Frances, I was then, and she asked me to lift a little old keg she kept her flour in. And, do you know, I began to tremble, and I told her I just couldn’t do it. “There’s a mouse in there!” I told her.

  ‘She was so wild. “Rubbish!” she stormed. She was a quick-tempered woman, red haired and plump, and couldn’t bear to be crossed. “Pick it up at once!”

  ‘And so I did. And when I looked inside, there was a mouse, dead as a doornail and smelling to high heaven! I dropped that double quick, you can be sure, and it rolled against a bottle of cider and smashed it to smithereens. Not that I waited to see it happen. I was down at the end of the garden, in the privy with the door bolted. She couldn’t get at me there!’

  Mary had heard the tale many times, but would not have dreamed of reminding her mother of the fact. It was her mother’s way, she realized, of apologizing for the trouble she was causing.

  Mrs Berry hated to be a nuisance, and now, with Mary so near to complete exhaustion, she was being the biggest nuisance possible, the old lady told herself guiltily. Why must that dratted mouse arrive in her bedroom on Christmas Eve?

  In the silence that had fallen there was the unmistakeable click of a mousetrap. Mary leaped to her feet.

  ‘Thank God!’ said Mrs Berry in all seriousness. Panic seized her once more. ‘Don’t let me see it, Mary, will you? I can’t bear to see their tails hanging down.’

  ‘I’ll bring the whole thing down in the wastepaper basket,’ promised Mary.

  But when she returned to the apprehensive old lady waiting below, she had nothing in her hand.

  ‘He took a nibble and then got away,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to wait a bit longer. I’ve set it a mite finer this time.’

  ‘I wish you had a braver mother,’ said Mrs Berry forlornly. Mary smiled at her, and her mother’s heart turned over. The girl looked ten years younger when she smiled. She didn’t smile enough, that was the trouble. Time she got over Bertie’s loss. There was a time for grieving, and a time to stop grieving. After all, she was still young and, smiling as she was now, very pretty too.

  Conversation lapsed, and the two tired women listened to the little intimate domestic noises of the house, the whispering of the flames, the hiss of a damp log, the rattle of the loose-fitting window. Outside, the rain fell down pitilessly. Mrs Berry wondered if the rolled-up towel was stemming the flood at the back door but was too tired to go and see.

  She must have dozed, for when she looked at the clock it was almost eleven. Mary was sitting forward in her chair, eyes fixed dreamily on the fire, miles away from Shepherds Cross.

  She stirred as her mother sat up.

  ‘I’ll go and see if we’ve had any luck.’

  Up the stairs she tiptoed once more, and returned almost immediately. She looked deathly pale with tiredness, and Mrs Berry’s heart was moved.

  ‘Still empty. He’s a fly one, that mouse. What shall we do?’

  Mrs Berry took charge with a flash of her old energy and spirit.

  ‘You’re going to bed, my girl. You’re about done in, I can see. I’ll stay down here for the night, for go up to that bedroom I simply cannot do!’

  ‘But, Mum, it’s such a beast of a night! You’d be better off in bed. Just wake me if the trap springs and I’ll come and see to it. It’s no bother, honest.’

  ‘No, Mary, you’ve done more than enough, and tomorrow’s a busy day. I’ll be all right here in the armchair. ’Tisn’t the firs
t time I’ve slept downstairs, and the storm don’t trouble me.’

  Mary looked doubtfully at the old lady but could see that her mind was made up.

  ‘All right then, Mum. I’ll go and fetch your eiderdown and pillow, and see you’ve got enough firing handy.’

  Yet again she mounted the stairs, while Mrs Berry made up the fire and bravely went to have a quick look at the towel by the back door. No more water had seeped in, so presumably the defenses were doing their work satisfactorily. She returned to the snug living room to find Mary plumping up the pillow.

  ‘Now, you’re sure you’re all right?’ she asked anxiously. ‘If I hear that trap go off before I get to sleep, shall I call you?’

  ‘No, my dear. You’ll be asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow tonight. I can see that. I shall settle here and be perfectly happy.’

  Mary retrieved the pillowcases, kissed her mother’s forehead, and went to the staircase for the last time that night.

  ‘Sleep well,’ she said, smiling at her mother, who by now was wrapped in the eiderdown. ‘You look as snug as a bug in a rug, as the children say.’

  ‘Good night, Mary. You’re a good girl,’ said her mother, watching the door close behind her daughter.

  Nearly half-past eleven, thought Mrs Berry. What a time to go to bed! Ten o’clock was considered quite late enough for the early risers of Shepherds Cross.

  She struggled from her wrappings to turn off the light and to put a little small coal on the back of the fire. The room was very pretty and cosy by the flickering firelight. There was no sound from upstairs. All three of them, thought Mrs Berry, would be asleep by now, and that wretched mouse still making free in her own bedroom, no doubt.

  Ah well, she was safe enough down here, and there was something very companionable about a fire in the room when you were settling down for the night.

  She turned her head into the feather-filled pillow. Outside the storm still raged and she could hear the rain drumming relentlessly upon the roof and the road. It made her own comfort doubly satisfying.

  God pity all poor travellers on a night like this, thought Mrs Berry, pulling up the eiderdown. ‘There’s one thing: I shan’t be awake long, storm or no storm.’

  She sighed contentedly and composed herself for slumber.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  But tired though she was, Mrs Berry could not get to sleep. Perhaps it was the horrid shock of the mouse, or the unusual bustle of Christmas that had overtired her. Whatever the reason, the old lady found herself gazing at the rosy reflection of the fire on the ceiling, her mind drifting from one inconsequential subject to the next.

  The bubbling of rain forcing its way through the crack of the window reminded her of the more ominous threat at the back door. Well, she told herself, that towel was standing up to the onslaught when she looked a short while ago. It must just take its chance. In weather like this, usual precautions were not enough. Stanley would have known what to do. A rolled-up towel wouldn’t have been good enough for him! Some sturdy carpentry would have made sure that the back door was completely weather-proof.

  Mrs Berry sighed and thought wistfully of their manless state. Two good husbands gone, and no sons growing up to take their place in the household! It seemed hard, but the ways of God were inscrutable and who was to say why He had taken them first?

  She thought of her first meeting with Stanley, when she was nineteen and he two years older. She had been in service then at the vicarage. Her employer was a predecessor of Mr Partridge’s, a bachelor who held the living of Fairacre for many years. He was a vague, saintly man, a great Hebrew scholar who had written a number of learned commentaries on the minor prophets of the Old Testament. His parishioners were proud of his scholarship but, between themselves, admitted that he was ‘only ninepence in the shilling’ when it came to practical affairs.

  Nevertheless, the vicarage was well run by a motherly old body who had once been nurse to a large family living in a castle in the next county. This training stood her in good stead when she took over the post of housekeeper to the vicar of Fairacre. She was methodical, energetic and abundantly kind. When a vacancy occurred for a young maid at the vicarage, Mrs Berry’s parents thought she would be extremely lucky to start work in such pleasant surroundings. They applied for the post for their daughter, then aged thirteen.

  Despite her lonely upbringing in the gamekeeper’s cottage, Amelia Scott, as she was then, was a friendly child, anxious to help and blessed with plenty of common sense. The housekeeper realized her worth, and trained her well, letting her help in the kitchen as well as learning the secrets of keeping the rest of the establishment sweet and clean.

  She thrived under the old lady’s tuition, and learned by her example to respect the sterling qualities of her employer. He was always ready to help his neighbours, putting aside his papers to assist anyone in trouble, and welcoming all – even the malodorous vagrants who ‘took advantage of him’, according to the housekeeper – into his study to give them refreshment of body and spirit.

  One bright June morning, when the dew sparkled on the roses, Amelia heard the chinking of metal on stone, and leaned out of the bedroom window to see two men at work on one of the buttresses of St Patrick’s church. The noise continued all the morning, and as the sun rose in the blue arc of a cloudless sky, she wondered if the master would send her across with a jug of cider to wash down the men’s dinners, as he often did. Then she remembered that he was out visiting at the other end of the parish. The housekeeper too was out on an errand. She was choosing the two plumpest young fowls, now running about in a neighbour’s chicken run, for the Sunday meal.

  Amelia was helping Bertha, the senior housemaid, to clean out the attics when they heard the ringing of the back-door bell.

  ‘You run and see to that,’ said Bertha, her arms full of derelict pillows. ‘I’ll carry on here.’

  Amelia sped downstairs through the shadows and sunlight that streaked the faded blue carpet, and opened the back door.

  A young man, with thick brown hair and very bright dark eyes, smiled at her apologetically.

  He held his left hand, which was heavily swathed in a red spotted handkerchief, in his right one, and dark stains showed that he was bleeding profusely.

  ‘Been a bit clumsy,’ he said. ‘My tool slipped.’

  ‘Come in,’ said Amelia, very conscious that she was alone to cope with this emergency. She led the way to the scullery and directed the young man to the shallow slate sink.

  ‘Put your hand in that bowl,’ she told him, ‘and I’ll pump some water. It’s very pure. We’ve got one of the deepest wells in the parish.’

  It was certainly a nasty gash, and the pure water, so warmly recommended by Amelia, was soon cloudy with blood.

  ‘Keep swilling it around,’ directed Amelia, quite enjoying her command of the situation, ‘while I get a bit of rag to bandage it.’

  ‘There’s no need miss,’ protested the young man. ‘It’s stopping. Look!’

  He held out the finger, but even as he did so, the blood began to well again. Amelia took one look and went to the bandage drawer in the kitchen dresser. Here, old pieces of linen sheeting were kept for just such an emergency, and the housekeeper’s pot of homemade salve stood permanently on the shelf above.

  No one quite knew what the ingredients of this cure-all were, for the recipe’s secret was jealously guarded, but goose grease played a large part in it, along with certain herbs that the old lady gathered from the hedgerows. During the few years of Amelia’s residence at the vicarage she had seen this salve used for a variety of ailments, from chilblains to the vicar’s shaving rash, and always with good results.

  She returned now with the linen and the pot of ointment. The young man still smiled, and Amelia smiled back.

  ‘Let me wrap it up,’ she said. ‘Let’s put some of this stuff on first.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Nothin’ to hurt you.’ Amelia assured him. ‘It�
�s good for everything. Cured some spots I had on my chin quicker ’n lightning.’

  ‘I don’t believe you ever had spots,’ said the young man gallantly. He held out the wounded finger, and Amelia twisted the strip round and round deftly, cutting the end in two to make a neat bow.

  ‘There,’ she said with pride, ‘now you’ll be more comfortable.’

  ‘Thank you, miss. You’ve been very kind.’

  He picked up the bloodied handkerchief.

  ‘Leave that there,’ said Amelia, ‘and I’ll wash it for you.’

  ‘No call to trouble you with that,’ said the young man. ‘My ma will wash it when I get back.’

  ‘Blood stains need soaking in cold water,’ Amelia told him, ‘and the sooner the better. I’ll put it to soak now, then wash it out.’

  ‘Well, thank you. We’re working on the church for the rest of the week. Can I call in tomorrow to get it?’

  Amelia felt a glow of pleasure at the thought of seeing him again, so soon. She liked his thick hair, his quick eyes, and his well-tanned skin – a proper nut-brown man, and polite too. Amelia looked at him with approval.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ she promised.

  ‘My name’s Berry,’ said the young man. ‘Stanley Berry. What’s yours?’

  ‘Amelia Scott.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Amelia, for a real good job. I must be getting back to work or I’ll get sacked.’

  She watched him cross the garden in the shimmering heat, the white bandage vivid against the brown background of his skin and clothes. He paused in the gateway leading to the churchyard, waving to her.

  Delighted, she waved back.

  ‘You’ve taken your time,’ grumbled Bertha, when she returned to the attic. She looked at Amelia’s radiant face shrewdly. ‘Who’d you see down there? Prince Charming?’

  Amelia forbore to answer, but thought that Bertha seemed to have guessed correctly.

  The next morning the young man called to collect his handkerchief. Amelia had washed and ironed it with extreme care, and had put it carefully on the corner of the dresser to await its owner.